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Haunted Flint

Friday, April 15, 2016

Interview and Giveaway- Wild Man’s Curse by Susannah Sandlin

Do
you have a daily word count goal or do you just write when you can fit it into
your schedule?

If I’m actively working on a
story or novel, I definitely set a daily word count. I take my deadline and
divide the number of days until deadline into the word count I want to hit. If
I fall behind, then I try to make it up on the weekends. Right now, I’m
focusing on my launch of WILD MAN’S CURSE and have a lot of promotional
material to write, so I have X projects due per day rather than a word count.
But as soon as the month’s done, I’ll dive back into another book.

What
do you need in a story to label it as suspense?

I think there has to be a sustained
and escalating danger to the main characters. That’s not to say a suspense
novel can’t have romance (of course) or even humor, but the conflict and
tension needs to stay pretty high and keep building throughout the story. The
other elements, even the romance in a romantic suspense, have to fit around the
suspense. The point you want to reach, at least by midway through the book, is
to keep events moving at such a taut pace that the reader doesn’t want to stop
until the very end. And after so much suspense, the end has to be satisfying.

What
is your favorite genre to write?

I label everything I write as
“suspense/thriller,” whether it involves humans as in WILD MAN’S CURSE, or
vampires as in the Penton Legacy series, or even wizards and elves as in my Sentinels
of New Orleans series, written as Suzanne Johnson. I’ve written a few sweeter
novelettes (both paranormals), but for the most part any novel I write will
either be paranormal romantic thriller or romantic suspense or urban fantasy
thriller. I think I read too much Stephen King as a child…and adult. And I
apparently like to blow up things.

How
many books are you planning in the Wilds of The Bayou Series?

Well, my publisher bought the
first two books, but we’ll have to wait and see how they sell. They’re very
reasonably priced, so I’m hoping they do well. I have five books planned, one
for each of the five wildlife enforcement agents (think really badass game
wardens) assigned to Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, in WILD MAN’S CURSE. Gentry
is the hero of that book; his partner, Jena Sinclair, is the heroine of the
second book. Another of the agents, Paul Billiot, is trying to lure me into
writing his book third, but I had originally planned him as fourth. We’ll see
who wins that one!

Can
you tell us about your current work in progress or what’s next on your release
schedule?

The next writing project I have
on my schedule is the fifth and final book in the Penton Vampire Legacy series.
I hope to get it out by the end of the year. The second Wilds of the Bayou book
is written and about to go into revisions soon, so it will likely come out late
this year, and BELLE CHASSE, the fifth and penultimate Sentinels of New Orleans
novel (as Suzanne Johnson) will be released on November 8.

Many
of your books take place in Louisiana, what are some of your favorite things
about Louisiana?

Oh gosh, I love it so much. The
culture is a true melting pot in the best sense of that term. The people are
warm-hearted, generous, and truly eccentric—LOL. The sounds from my house in
New Orleans, from the clattering of the streetcar to the foghorns of the ships
on the Mississippi River to the sound of wind moving the massive branches of
towering 300-year-old live oaks. The music. The food. The bayous and marshlands
of the coastal parishes. It’s easier to ask the things I don’t like: the
humidity, the traffic in New Orleans, nutria, and evil buck moth caterpillars. Don’t
even ask about the latter two. They’re too gross to even talk about.

What
is your favorite genre to read?

I actually read a lot of
nonfiction—some for research and some for pleasure. In terms of fiction, I
enjoy urban fantasy and, if I really want to escape, historical romance.
Dystopians. I’m a pretty democratic reader. The only genres I don’t read much
are epic fantasy and hard sci fi. I enjoyed YA for a while, but got burned out
on whiny teenagers with suddenly-found special powers pretty quickly.

What
are you reading now?

I’m reading HOW DOGS LOVE US by
Gregory Berns, a neuroscientist who uses functional MRI to try and decode the
emotional lives of dogs. I lost both of my 16-year-old furkids in the last year
and am not emotionally ready to get another dog but having those two for so
long and watching how they responded to me in different ways and learned from
each other made me want to read this. I’m about halfway through so I don’t know
his findings yet! I’m also re-reading the New Testament and am about halfway
through Kendra Elliot’s ALONE, which is romantic suspense. I usually have a
couple of books in progress at any given time.

What
books are in your to-be-read stack?

Kim Harrison’s first Peri Reed
novel, THE DRAFTER, is up next, then her Kindle short, SIDESWIPED, which has
Peri Reed and Rachel Morgan in it. I’m reviewing them for my blog in advance of
a guest post from Kim (stops for a fangirl moment). Her second Peri Reed book
comes out in November, so I’ll be ready for it! I’m also woefully behind on
some of my favorite series, most notably Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden series, so
I need to get caught up.

Wild Man’s Curse

Wilds of the Bayou Series

Book One

Susannah Sandlin

Genre: Romantic Suspense

Publisher: Montlake Romance

Date of Publication: April 5, 2016

ISBN: 978-1503934740

ASIN: B017IKQWAG

Number of pages: 284

Word Count: approx. 86,000

Cover Artist: Michael Rehder

Book Description:

The bones said death was comin’, and the bones never lied.

While on an early morning patrol in the swamps of Whiskey Bayou, Louisiana wildlife agent Gentry Broussard spots a man leaving the home of voodoo priestess Eva Savoie—a man who bears a startling resemblance to his brother, whom Gentry thought he had killed during a drug raid three years earlier. Shaken, the agent enters Eva’s cabin and makes a bloody discovery: the old woman has been brutally murdered.

With no jurisdiction over the case, he’s forced to leave the investigation to the local sheriff, until Eva’s beautiful heir, Celestine, receives a series of gruesome threats. As Gentry’s involvement deepens and more victims turn up, can he untangle the secrets behind Eva’s murder and protect Celestine from the same fate?

Eva Savoie leaned back in the
rocking chair and pushed it into motion on the uneven wide-plank floor of the
one-room cabin. Her grandpere Julien
had built the place more than a century ago, pulling heavy cypress logs from
the bayou and sawing them, one by one, into the thick planks she still walked
across every day.

She had never known
Julien Savoie, but she knew of him. The curse that had stalked her family for
three generations had started with her grandfather and what he’d done all those
years ago.

What he’d brought
with him to Whiskey Bayou with blood on his hands.

What had driven her
daddy to shoot her mama, and then himself, before either turned forty-five.

What had led Eva’s
brother Antoine to drown in the bayou only a half-mile from this cabin, leaving
a wife and infant son behind.

What stalked Eva now.

The bones said death was coming
and, once Eva was gone, the curse should go with her. No one else knew the
secrets of Julien Savoie and this cabin and that box full of sin he’d dug out
of the bayou mud back in Isle de Jean Charles.

Might take a while, but sin
catches up with you. Always had. Always would. And the curse had driven Eva to
sin. Oh yes, she had sinned.

She’d known her reckoning would
catch up with her, although it had taken a good long time. She’d turned
seventy-eight yesterday, or was it eighty? She couldn’t remember for sure, and
the bones said it didn’t matter now.

On the scarred wooden table
before Eva sat three burning candles that filled the room with the soft,
soothing glow of melting tallow. She’d made them herself, infusing them with
the oil of the fragrant lilies that every spring spread a bright green carpet
over the lazy, brown water of the bayou. The tools of her ritual sat on an
ancient square of tanned hide passed down through generations of holy ones, of
those blessed by the gods with the ability to throw the bones.

A small mound of delicate chicken
bones, yellowed and fragile from age, lay inside the circle of light cast by
the candles. Daylight would come in an hour or so, but Eva didn’t expect to
last that long. Death was even now making his way toward her.

She leaned forward, wincing at
the stab of pain in her lower back. Since the first throw of the bones had
whispered her fate two days ago, she’d been cleaning. Scrubbed the floor, worn
smooth by decades of bare feet. Washed the linens, folding them in neat piles
in a drawer at the bottom of the old pie safe. Discarded most of the food in
the little refrigerator that sat in the corner. Dragged the bag of trash down
the long, overgrown drive past LeRoy’s old 1970 Chevy pickup that she still drove
up to Houma for groceries and such once a month. Left the white bag at the side
of the parish road for the weekly trash collection.

She’d spit on LeRoy’s truck as
she passed it because she couldn’t spit on the man who bought it. He was long
gone.

Now the cleaning had been
finished. Whoever discovered her raggedy old body wouldn’t find a mess, not in
Eva Savoie’s house.

A few minutes ago, with the old
cabin as clean as she was capable of making it, she’d thrown the bones one last
time. Part of her hoped they’d read different, hoped she’d be granted a few
more days of grace.

But the bones still whispered
death. Eva accepted it, and she sat, and she waited. At least the girl,
Celestine, would inherit a cleaned-up house. The girl, Antoine’s granddaughter,
knew nothing of the secrets, nothing of the curse. Eva had made sure of that….

Eva waited for her heart to
fail—that seemed to be her most likely way to go. As she rocked she noted each
steady beat, biding her time for the instant when the thump-thump-thump would falter and her breath would catch, then
stop. She reckoned it would hurt a little, but what if it did? The curse had
doled out worse ends to those who came before her.

She’d doled out worse herself.

The buzz of a boat’s motor
sounded from outside the cabin, faint but growing louder. Wardens on patrol
already, most likely.

The boat’s engine grew louder,
finally coming to an abrupt stop so near, it had to be right outside her door.
Silence filled the room once again, until through her bones she felt the thud
of someone jumping onto the porch that wrapped around the cabin. The porch
formed the platform on which the house sat, linking it to the spit of land
behind it when the water was normal. When storms blew through, it provided an
island on which the cabin could sit or, if need be, float.

As heavy footfalls crossed the
porch, Eva struggled to her feet. Every pop and crackle of her joints knifed
streaks of pain through her limbs as they protested the cleaning they’d done,
followed by the sitting.

Prob’ly a game warden, checkin’
on her. Too bad he hadn’t stopped a little later, after she was gone. She
didn’t like to think of her body having to bake in the hot cabin for days
before anyone found her.

But the curse was what it was,
and the bones said what they said.

The knock, when it came, was
soft, and Eva reached the door with the help of a sturdy cane she’d carved
herself. Opening the door, she squinted into the glare of a flashlight that
seemed almost blinding after the soft light of the candles. She peered up at a
young man with eyes that gleamed from beneath the hood of a jacket. He was not
a game warden, and it was too hot for a jacket.

“Who are you?” Her voice cracked.
She knew who he was. He was Death.

“The devil come to pay you a
visit, Eva.” The man’s voice was smooth as silk, smooth as a lie, smooth as
death itself. “And you know what the devil wants.”

She knew what he wanted, and she
knew the only way to end the curse was to deny him.

She’d been granted no easy
passing by the Savoie curse after all, but she would die today.

The bones never lied.

About the Author:

Susannah Sandlin is the author of the award-winning Penton Vampire Legacy paranormal romance series, including the 2013 Holt Medallion Award-winning Absolution and Omega and Allegiance, which were nominated for the RT Book Reviews Reviewers Choice Award in 2014 and 2015, respectively. She also writers The Collectors romantic suspense series, including Lovely, Dark, and Deep, 2015 Holt Medallion winner and 2015 Booksellers Best Award winner. Her new series Wilds of the Bayou starts in 2016 with the April 5 release of Wild Man’s Curse. Writing as Suzanne Johnson, Susannah is the author of the award-winning Sentinels of New Orleans urban fantasy series. A displaced New Orleanian, she currently lives in Auburn, Alabama. Susannah loves SEC football, fried gator on a stick, all things Cajun, and redneck reality TV.

4 comments:

I thought Wild Man's Curse was a wonderful story. A great introduction to Susannah's new series. Grab your copy of “Wild Man’s Curse” today, you will enjoy the read. “Gotta love the contradictory nature of South Louisiana.”